Homemade Cleaning Supply update!

With the popularity of my cleaning supplies posts, and the questions I have gotten, I thought I would write a follow up. I have been living with and using these products for about 2 weeks so I thought I should let you know what I think!

Laundry Soap:

We are LOVING it! We love the way it smells, we love the way it cleans, we love it! We even love that it prompted us to buy this cute glass bottle from Ikea to hold it (for only $3.99)

Common questions have been "Does it smell weird?" and "Does it really get your clothes clean?"

and the answers are no and yes! It smells wonderful, and very clean, but doesn't leave a strong fragrance on your clothes! AND it gets our clothes very clean. This might be TMI but for me, the proof is in the panties. In my opinion, those get the dirtiest (and anyone with a husband knows that's the truth!) It cleans them wonderfully and leaves them smelling fresh as new. (sorry for the overshare, but it proves how well it works!)

I have been asked if it will hurt a front load washer. I have a front load washer and dryer so I did some research prior to embarking on this endevor. I found this on soapsgonebuy.com

TIP:
The above recipes will NOT make suds in your washer so don't be alarmed. Fels Naptha Soap is a pure soap and typically makes little or no suds in the water. This makes it perfect for use in the new HE washers as well as tradional washers. You will also notice the need to either reduce your laundry softener or in most cases you can even eliminate the use of softener completely.

Also, the Duggars use it so I trust it.

Any other questions are more than welcome! I am really loving our soap and I can't say enough great things about it.

Dishwasher Detergent:

Also Loving it. I know, you were all hoping for something juicy like that we hate it, but alas, nope. It has come with it's fair share of challenges tho. I did read a tip on the original recipe that you must agitate it once mixed because the presence of Citric Acid makes it clump. Well we made our soap right before thanksgiving (and left home for 5 days) and came back to a solid brick of dish soap. Crap! So we decided to put it in the Ninja to break it up again.

After it was a nice powder again, we decided to try to portion it out into 1 wash sized cubes (using the clumping to our advantage this time!) We portioned out 1 tbs into our ice tray and let it sit on the counter over night.

By morning they were firm so we popped them out and put them in a bag. They have been working wonders every since. They clean the dishes quite nicely and the Vinegar seems to be doing a great job at cutting any potential cloudyness. We never used a rinse agent before, so I am not sure if it is really making a difference. Someone expressed their concern that the lemonade cool-aid might stain the dishwasher. We have washed roughly 10 loads of dishes in the last 2 weeks and it hasn't left any yellow stains. I will keep an eye on that tho, and let you know if anything changes. Also we have white plastic plates and it hasn't stained those yellow at all. It does smell deliciously like lemonade tho!

So that's my update! We are really glad we took the plunge and everything is working out well! A friend of mine recommended making our own dryer sheets, and I think I might try it out. We only use dryer sheets occasionally now, so I am not sure it would save us much money, but for anyone who uses them religiously, it might be a good idea!

Leave any questions in the comments and I will answer them!